


Stolen Thoughts and Memories

by Magos_Dominus



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Blood, Character Death, Drowning, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Mouth-to-Mouth, Necromancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24262813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magos_Dominus/pseuds/Magos_Dominus
Summary: My one-shot and short-fic collection. Additional and alternate scenes from Midgar, to the Planet's core, to the edge of Creation itself. Mostly Cloud/Tifa. Some Gen/AU.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 10
Kudos: 87





	1. Sense Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first foray into putting pen to paper and writing fiction about these two lovestruck morons. A take on them washing up on the shores of the Lifestream in Mideel, deep into Disc 2. Cloud's POV.

His head felt like it was going to split open.

His body was numb, his clothes were sopping wet, the air reeked of sour mint and o-zone, and a soft pair of lips were pressing against his own. Their owner forced a urgent lungful of air into him, until her chest begin to burn, and she was forced to break away, panting, and struggle to get her ragged breaths under control.

He sputtered as she pulled away, coughing up the same harsh, emerald liquid that had seeped through his clothing and into his skin. His chest heaved erratically as he began gulping down air in a series of wheezing gasps. "Cloud!" she exclaimed, kneeling over him, her eyes bloodshot and brimming with tears.

"Look at me, Cloud,” she begged. “Can you hear me?” Her delicate features creased with worry and mounting panic laced her voice, her shaking hands coming to rest against his shoulders. “Stay with me," she implored. “ _Please_.”

He felt his chest constrict painfully as his eyes struggled to open, straining in the daylight. He brought up a hand to palm, clumsily, at the fuzzy outline of her silhouette. His fingers ghosting across the curve of her neck and shoulders before they felt their way to the line of her jaw. " _Tifa_ ," he croaked, her features coming into focus as his thumb brushed away the wetness that tracked across her cheek. Her kind, burgundy eyes closed, gently, as she leaned into his touch and brought a gloved hand up to envelop his.

"I'm glad that you’re alright, Cloud," she muttered, her voice low and tight and _fragile_. "So glad."

The moment stretched on as his senses returned to him. The sound of their shared, uneven breathing and the call of seabirds filled his ears. He could smell the salt and acrid scent of mako on the breeze. Tifa, dark locks damp and plastered against her face, was bent over him, haloed by the light of a setting sun. Debris dug into flesh of his back and he reveled in the warmth of her body where it pressed against his skin.

"Can't get rid of me that easy, Teef," he rasped, the corner of his mouth tugging into a smirk. "Besides, Barret still owes me for that last job."

She rolled her eyes at him as they opened, rueful grimace steadily relaxing into a shy, impish smile. “What am I going to do with you, Cloud Strife?" she whispered.

He took a deep, steadying breath.

"This," he sighed, cupping her face with his hand, and leaned up to capture the taste of her lips with his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all enjoyed the read, there should be more to come.
> 
> Yours,  
> Magos


	2. Two Corpses, In One Grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In another world, Nibelheim had no survivors, and the dead do not rest easily, but a hunter is ever a hunter. He had unfinished business, and so did they. Sephiroth!POV. Tifa!POV. SoulsSeries!AU.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tifa isn't really the type to monologue, but she deserves a chance to hand ol' Seph his ass and mock him. Turnabout is fair play, after all.

The world swam around him, free hand grasping at his swollen throat, and he struggled to his feet. "My word, hunter, five years later and you still use the same old bag of tricks?” his assailant mocked. “I must say that I’m disappointed."

She brought a hand to her chest with an exaggerated flourish. "Ah,” she sighed, “ _the memories._ ” Her voice dripped with contempt, playful demeanor sobering, as she shifted into a ready stance. “However, _touching_ as this little reunion has been, I expected somewhat… _more_ ," she confessed, "from a swordsman of your purported caliber."

Her low, sardonic tone pressed against his skull, echoing off the vaulted stone corridor in the eerie, unnatural silence. Her approaching footsteps clacked rhythmically against broken tile, and he struggled to raise his weapon into a high, brittle guard. The pommel all but pressed into his cheek. The edge of the blade caught the moonlight that filtered through shattered glass and crumbling masonry, gleaming like polished silver in the darkness. He felt the tension coil in his muscles and made a sudden, unsteady shift. His weapon plunged at a familiar rent in her soot-blackened armor, where her heart once beat out blooming, crimson stains across her tarnished, bone-white finery and onto the marble floor.

The kill-stroke connected with an unexpected ease, tired arms throbbing from the force of impact, and the women lurched backwards. For a long moment, the weight of her skewered form hung, still and lifeless, on the edge of the blade.

Her hands came up then, suddenly, to grasp the length running through her chest. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks, it seems," she said casually, using the weapon to leverage herself upright, blade inching its way further into her chest. "That worked last time,” she teased, head tilting in consideration. “Didn't it?"

His head began to clear, and his ringing ears caught the heavy footfall of a creature he had spent two years hunting, a moment to late. It's armored gauntlet enclosed suddenly around his neck. It leeched the warmth from his flesh and dulled the throbbing pain in his neck. He tensed, not daring to move. "But we are so much _more_ than what we used to be. You remember my Hound, I trust?" she probed, as large, gaunt fingers tightened around him, coaxing a strangled cry from his bruised throat. "You must. He gave you quite the fight, as I recall. It must be shameful," she mused, ghosting metal talons over the bandages that covered his face. “A seasoned warrior, so thoroughly scarred by a boy who could barely lift a sword.” He felt her attention narrow, and rasped as the woman’s nails dug into the old, burnt scar tissue that wound around his neck. What little air that struggled into his lungs vanished. Her gaze bore into him, accusingly. "You _ruined_ him."

He could feel the blood spill from his neck and soak into latticework of bandages that covered his chest. "It took a long time,” she continued, as if somewhere else, “but I _stitched_ him back together." Even with her face masked, he could feel her attention drift from him to stare at the gaps in the ceiling, as one might consider a work of art. "He's taller than he used to be, of course. Some pieces were... missing. _You_ made sure of that. So, I had to find replacements. Enough to sure up his body and stabilize the bindings.” Her tone was wistful, and bittersweet. “He’s still himself though, isn’t he?” A question she directed, indulgently, at the figure whose grip threatened to snap his injured neck. “My stubborn, faithful Hound.”

The Hound did not stir. He wondered if it could still understand her, and heard the wind, whistling through the stonework, in the expectant silence.

“He was never a _thrilling_ conversationalist,” she muttered, with some disappointment. “He didn’t need words to tell me what he felt, though. A man of action," she declared, "much like yourself.” Her head lowered, suddenly, to fix her gaze on him again. “But what of me, you ask? What happened to that brave girl who once traded blows with a bloody-handed _monster_?”

She did not wait for him to answer.

“You killed her,” she accused, voice strained and cold as the mountain air. “You tore what made me whole and human, still _beating_ , from my body.” Her free hand came up and gestured at the wound in her torso. “You left me like _this_. Don’t you remember?” She pressed forward, down the length of the blade, until he heard the hilt clack against her armor. She leaned in, close enough that the chill of her breath frosted against his skin, hissing in his ear, “A heartless _wretch_.”

He felt the hand around his neck squeeze. It hauled him off the ground and carried him with it into the air, sword slipping from his grasp. It released, and he arced high into the cold night, crashing through ruined stonework. He sailed over mountainside and out of sight. When the ground rose up to meet him, he knew no more, and dreamed.

* * *

She sagged against a stone wall, wrath and refinement giving way to exhaustion. “Can you help me with this _inconvenience_?” she implored, tugging at the long, sliver blade driven to the hilt through her sternum . “Please?”

The Hound responded slowly, bending onto one knee as it rested a hand against her hip, the other grasping the weapon, and tugged on the blade. It remained stuck fast in her chest, the gentle movement pulling both it, and her, incrementally forward.

"I'm not going to break, you know," she huffed, head falling back. "It can't hurt me anymore. Try again." She rested a hand against the Hound's, and felt the creature's hand brace against her waist. It pulled, pressing her into the wall, and the blade came loose in a single, irregular motion as it caught, briefly, on her ribs. The Hound held it for a brief moment, almost disdainfully, before it spun the weapon in its palm with a clumsy flourish, and presented it to her. She let out a low chuckle in response. "A gift? How... considerate," she admitted, tucking her chin against her chest. "Finally dropping that strong-and-silent-type routine, _hmm_? Took you long enough."

She felt old memories dance across her vision and, for a moment, she was herself again.

"Imagine the scandal! Imagine how _my father_ would-" she stopped, the feeling fading as quickly as it came, words dead in her throat. The Hound considered her for a moment, before it pulled the sword from her limp grasp. The weapon clattered onto the tiled floor and, with one hand, it pulled her close to curl protectively around her shaking form. She buried her face against its chest, and brought her arms up to encircled her loyal, stoic guardian.

She remained there for a long, silent moment.

"Thank you," she breathed. "I... I accept your gift." She knelt to recover the fallen sword and brought it up to the light. Amusement crept back into her voice. "It's not a _ring_ , of course. You've been dragging your feet on _that_ for a while, too, but I suppose it will do." She gave the weapon a few hesitant, experimental swings. The weapon was almost comically large in her hands, but it carved through the empty air with a contemptuous ease.

She ran her fingers along the flat of the blade, appraising. "Oh, yes. I think I can make use of _this_."

* * *

He woke, again, within the dream. “That _harridan_ ,” he spat, “took my sword.”


	3. We Should Go Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were meant for each other. It's tragic, really. Cloud!POV.

"Just... don't leave me. _Please_ ," she begs with a fragile, distant voice. "Let me stay like this for a little while longer." She buries her face into the hollow of his throat, taking comfort in his irregular breathing and the erratic beat of his heart,

He was alive, she told herself, and she could be happy knowing that. Her vision fades.

“I'm not letting you go, Teef," he chokes out, arms tightening securely around her injured body. "I'm not doing it again.” He carded shaking fingers, rhythmically, through her dark hair. “You know me. When I make a girl a promise…” he pauses, his throat too tight to form words.

He knows that she's gone, and feels her shallow breath against his neck for the last time. "…I keep it," he finishes, and something deep inside him breaks.

He knows that it should have been him.

The others find him the next morning, still cradling Tifa in his arms, trying to warm her. Tears stain his face, but his eyes have been dry for a long time. Its only after he collapses from exhaustion that they carry her away.

A part of him goes with her.


End file.
